ROMANTIC NATIONALISM

Chapter:

CHAPTER 3 Volkstümlichkeit

Source:

MUSIC IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Author(s):

Richard Taruskin

With this thoroughly urbanized and neurotic song we have strayed pretty far from the state of nature, as did the lied itself
in the generations after Schubert. The solo song became increasingly a site for subjective lyric expression, the more intense
or even grotesque the better, leaving collective subjectivity to the larger, more literally collective choral and dramatic
genres. The traditional volkstümliches Lied became once again the domain of specialist composers, like Carl Loewe (1796–1869), who, though actually a couple of months
older than Schubert, is usually thought of as belonging to a later generation since he lived so much longer. He remained faithful
to the ballad and other genres of story-song into the 1860s, and also, in the spirit of Herder, set Slavic and Jewish folk
texts in addition to German ones.